1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic component capable of fully absorbing a stress and realizing reduction in production cost, and more particularly, to the electronic component suitable for use as a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, multilayer ceramic capacitors that are chip-type electronic components made of ceramic have come into general use for a substrate. However, in the structure in which this multilayer ceramic capacitor is directly mounted on the substrate, if the substrate is deformed by deflection due to a stress given to the substrate itself, a mechanical stress is given to the multilayer ceramic capacitor, which may possibly lead to the occurrence of a crack.
Further, an aluminum substrate uses aluminum as a base of the substrate and thus its coefficient of thermal expansion is large. Therefore, when a multilayer ceramic capacitor made of ceramic whose coefficient of thermal expansion greatly differs from that of aluminum is directly mounted on this substrate, a large thermal stress is generated. This thermal stress may also possibly cause a crack in the multilayer ceramic capacitor.
As a solution to the aforesaid crack problem that may occur when ceramic capacitor elements being body portions of multilayer ceramic capacitors are mounted on a substrate, known is a multilayer ceramic capacitor in which a pair of metal terminals serving as metal caps each having a fold part are attached to the capacitor elements.
As a specific example of the conventional multilayer ceramic capacitor, FIG. 9 shows the external appearance of a multilayer capacitor 100, which will be described below with reference to this drawing.
In the multilayer capacitor 100 shown in FIG. 9, a pair of metal terminals 102, 103 attached to and sandwiching two capacitor elements 101 are formed in a U-shape, with upper parts thereof folded, so as not to become larger than necessary. The pair of metal terminals 102, 103 absorb and alleviate the deflection of the substrate by their elastic deformation, thereby weakening a stress generated in the ceramic capacitor elements 101.
However, part cost necessary for manufacturing the metal terminals 102, 103, which are used as parts, has been increased due to poor machinability when the metal terminals 102, 103 serving as caps are machined so as to have the fold parts as described above. Moreover, since there are gaps in the fold parts of the metal terminals 102, 103, components are easily entangled with each other because part of other metal terminals get in the gaps and due to other reasons, which worsens work efficiency. As a result, the conventional multilayer capacitor 100 shown in FIG. 9 has a disadvantage of higher total production cost.